The curse of having a lot of marketing data is that it can suddenly bring analysis and insight to a grinding halt.

A report from the Forbes Marketing and Accountability Initiative recently found that an astounding 89% of marketing executives can’t quantify a return on data and analytics investment within one year. In an effort to deal with this kind of problem, the semiconductor maker Arm Ltd. acquired enterprise information management firm Treasure Data in 2018. Nearly a year later, Arm not only has success stories to show for it, but the company has learned valuable lessons about the importance of channeling data into customer insight.

“Most marketers have focused on the prospect journey and have not really thought through marketing to customers and engaging them in so many ways,” said Joyce Kim (pictured), Arm’s chief marketing officer. “We can understand and help define the landscape. We become sort of a data clearinghouse for customers.”

Kim spoke with Peter Burris, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, at theCUBE’s studio in Palo Alto, California. They discussed the importance of respecting consumer privacy in managing data and listening to customer needs when building the right marketing strategy (see the full interview with transcript here).

Data privacy a top priority

Like many of its enterprise counterparts, Arm must deal with concerns over how data is handled. It’s an increasingly important question, as one survey recently found that marketing leaders listed consumer privacy protection as second only to actionable insights in the list of top priorities for data.

“We could justify all day long that having more data will provide better advertising or better targeted something,” Kim said. “That’s not necessarily universal. For us as a marketing industry, we need to think about the boundaries and lines that we draw for ourselves so that we don’t violate customer trust.”

In guiding Arm’s marketing organization, Kim has followed a philosophy based on not marketing the company’s own organizational structure, but rather staying attuned to what the customer cares about the most.

“I fundamentally believe in that mantra that if you treat your customers right or if you respect the market in which you’re trying to win, that serves your company best,” Kim explained. “We are the face of the company. That is a responsibility that all marketers should take very seriously and respect.”

Here’s the video interview with Kim below, one of many CUBE Conversations from SiliconANGLE and theCUBE:

Photo: SiliconANGLE